The Man Behind The Truck Attack That Killed At Least 84 People In France, Says PM

The man behind the truck attack that killed at least 84 people celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice had recently been radicalized, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in remarks published on Sunday.

Thursday night’s attack in the Riviera city of Nice plunged France into new grief and fear just eight months after gunmen killed 130 people in Paris. Those attacks, and one in Brussels four months ago, shocked Western Europe, already anxious over security challenges from mass immigration, open borders and pockets of Islamist radicalism.

Authorities have yet to produce evidence that the 31 year-old Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, shot dead by police, had any links to Islamic State, which claimed the attack, but Valls said there was no doubt on the assailant’s motives.
“The investigation will establish the facts, but we know now that the killer was radicalised very quickly,” Valls said in an interview with Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
“The claim on Saturday morning by Islamic State and the fast radicalisation of the killer confirms the Islamist nature of this attack.”

Officials said on Saturday that people questioned by police had indicated that he had undergone a rapid transformation from someone with no apparent interest in religion.
Relative and friends interviewed in Nice painted a picture of a man who at least until recently drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and according to French media even ate pork, behaviour that would be unlikely in a devout Muslim.

Speaking from his home town in Tunisia, Bouhlel’s sister told Reuters he had been having psychological problems when he left for France in 2005 and had sought medical treatment.
As authorities were trying to better understand his motives, two more people, a man and a woman close to Bouhlel, were arrested in Nice early on Sunday, bringing the number of people in detention over the killings to seven.

The Amaq news agency affiliated with the militant Islamist group said that Bouhlel “was one of the soldiers of Islamic State”.